[ LETTER ]

Tue, Nov 12, 2013 - Page 8

KMT and DPP stand for...

Amid the recent influx of foreigners to Taiwan who might be confused about the nation’s political landscape, I offer the following glossary to facilitate understanding of the terms used in the English-language media.

The Chinese Nationalist Party’s acronym “KMT” actually refers to the Kleptofascist Mainland Thieves, and is the party that has dominated Taiwan’s politics for decades under its corrupt rule.

When KMT leaders talk about “reforms,” this means devising new policies to cheat the poor, disenfranchise the disadvantaged and facilitate immoral land-grabs against Formosa’s original inhabitants of thousands of years.

KMT talk of “party solidarity” refers to the fact that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), as KMT chairman, controls the purse strings of the party’s ill-gotten assets following Formosa’s transfer from Japan after World War II, and that under-the-table cash payments to KMT legislators from the “superfund” will abruptly cease unless they continue to ignore their constituents’ wishes and vote according to what the party-state dictates.

On the “green” side of the isle, the Democratic Progressive Party’s acronym “DPP” actually stands for the Decrepit Pensioners Party, a group so inured in their old-school thinking and so out of touch with today’s youth that they cannot manage to propose any meaningful changes in the face of Taiwan’s ever-deteriorating fiscal unsustainability.

It is a total myth that the DPP was ever “in power.” Indeed, during the entire “reign” of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the KMT-dominated legislature consistently blocked dozens of progressive proposals and completely watered down the “sunshine laws” that could have prevented the current scandalst that plague Taiwan today.

Indeed, neither party has any plan whatsoever to create a pragmatic, balanced budget or deal with national debt, which has ballooned by NT$1.72 trillion (US$58.2 billion) under the Ma administration, given the KMT’s flagrant vote-buying pension plan and the complete insolvency of the National Health Insurance scheme.

Not one politician has proposed policies that energize the passion and creativity of the younger population in a way that will allow them to earn the income that will support the demographic of retiring seniors, a fiscal disaster currently playing out in Japan and the US.

Moving on to our “non-country” status, thanks to Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) colossal cock-up back in the 1950s, our quasi-democratic, peace-loving nation is not a member of the UN. Indeed, Taiwan truly is a red-headed stepchild akin to Palestine.

Taiwan needs leaders who can exit the Cold War mentality of the 20th century and enter a sustainable future. With profitable agricultural policies, as the brilliant op-ed writer Du Yu (杜宇) promotes, we can feed our own people and recycle pig shit for both energy and fertilizer.

Taiwan should also be wary of so-called “free-trade” pacts that enslave it to global mega-corporations and stop spending money trying to join the useless and corrupt UN, which has never actually prevented or stopped civil conflict anywhere.